Embodiments of the inventive concept described herein relate to a wall-climbing aerial robot mechanism and a method of controlling the same. More particularly, they relate to an aerial robot type wall-climbing aerial robot, and also relate to an aerial robot mechanism that may fly and climb a wall as well as a method of controlling the same.
In recent years, as structures such as buildings or bridges have been large-scaled and have become higher and the existing large-scale structures have been aged, the importance of inspect of the structures are increasing. However, because the inspectors have to move directly to the inspection areas to perform the existing inspections, problems such as a high dependency on manpower, a high danger due to the characteristics of the work spaces, inspection costs, and lack of specialized manpower exist. As one of the methods for solving the problems, wall-climbing robots that may move on inner and outer rails of large-scale structures have been actively studied.
The wall-climbing robots may be utilized for maintaining of high structures or large-scale structure that cannot be easily approached, for cleaning outer walls, or diagnosing the health of the structures. In particular, when the structures are solar cell panels in cities, power generation efficiency deteriorates over time due to the contaminants. Accordingly, the solar cell panels have to be maintained continuously and periodically, but there is a limit in applying an infra-based system to the solar cell panels due to the shapes and arrangements of the solar cell panels.
The studies on the wall-climbing robots have been made from a long time ago due to the realistic necessities such as cleaning, maintenance, and diagnoses of the structures. Meanwhile, due to the characteristics of the wall-climbing aerial robots, a danger of crashes is always present, and the aerial robots fail to satisfy the technical maturity that is high enough to overcome the disadvantages, making it difficult to commercialize the aerial robots.
Although an infra-based wall-climbing aerial robot system, such as a rail or a crane/wire, has been developed and managed to overcome the disadvantage until now, the shapes of the applicable structures are restricted due to the characteristics of the infra-based system, and efficiency deteriorates when the structure is not a structure of a certain size or larger.
Korean Patent Application Publication No. 10-2013-0098062 relates to an outer wall climbing robot that may fly, and describes a technology of an outer wall climbing robot that may fly, which improves movement and control performances of landing and take-off by adding an operational force for flight together with driving wheels.